What is NControl?

NControl is a free iPhone/iPod Touch application that allows you to use your iPhone/iPod Touch as a remote control for your Media Center. It enables users to browse through pictures, video, recorded shows, tv channels, as well as navigate the Media Center interface. It also has a set of standard buttons found on traditional remotes such as play, pause fast forward, rewind, stop, mute and volume.

NControl Media Center plugin is also a free download (see below). This plugin will allow the NControl iPhone application to communicate with Media Center and Media Center Extenders. Feel free to install it on as many machines as you please.

App Store URL: NControl

PC Requirements:

• 32 or 64 bit - Vista Home Premium, Vista Ultimate, Windows 7 Premium, Windows 7 Ultimate
  
• .Net 3.5 framework
  
• NControl Media Center plugin (see PC Installation Instructions below)
  

PC Intallation Instructions:

1. Download the free Media Center plugin here. IMPORTANT!! v40 or greater will NOT work with NControl 1.0
   
   

   NControl 1.0	NControl 1.1
   MediaCenter plugin	MediaCenter plugin (v43)

   
   
   
2. Shutdown any extenders connected to the machine. Exit any running instance of Media Center.
   
3. You will need administrative rights to install this plugin.
   
4. Important! After the plugin installation, you will need to launch Media Center. A network security warning will appear. You must click "Allow”.
   

Plugin Release Notes:

• 9/4/2009 - Initial release
  
• 9/11/2009 - v26 Fixed crashing bug. RecordedTV, Music, Pictures and Videos are now limited to 30 items. The plugin will send the complete channel lineup (only available with TV tuners). Unfortunately, the current version of the iPhone app does not handle large media libraries. An update for the iPhone app is under development to address these issues. The next plugin will include the Windows7 library fix.
  
• 9/24/2009 - v28 Fixed issue when the host machine has several IP addresses. The plugin is now a little more intelligent about choosing the IP address to listen on.
  
• 10/4/2009 - v30 NControl plugin now supports Windows7 libraries. Files organized in the new Windows7 libraries will now show up in NControl. However, folders and files from remote machines will not showup. Vista users won't notice any new functionality.
  
• 10/4/2009 - v31 Fixed issue with extenders on Windows7 since extenders through Windows7 do not have libraries, Instead, the plugin uses the set of directories known to MediaCenter as the source of all media, similar to the way the plugin works in Vista.
  
• 10/9/2009 - v32 The plugin now listens on any IP address. Before, this release, the plugin chooses the IP address to listen on. This was very problematic since CableCard devices are recognized as network interfaces. Another change in this release is the log file. The log file will be created if it does not already exist. Each user account on a machine would have their own log file. The log file is located in <public user folder>\Documents\NControl_*.log. I decided to include this functionality to help end users troubleshoot any connectivity or library folder issues.
  
• 10/18/2009 - v33 Windows7 take 2... Full Windows7 library support directly and through extenders. Also fixed a Windows7 extender bug when using skip forward and skip back while watching a TV show. Skip Forward and Skip Back now works with extenders while watching Live TV or pre-recorded TV Show. Fixed a bug where the plugin unnecessarily rebuilds the media database when changing TV stations.
  
• 11/8/2009 - v34 Major MediaDB overhaul. Network shared files are now included in libraries. In the new build, if folders are added or removed from the library folders (Windows7) or tracking directories (Vista) within MediaCenter, NControl will not recognize these changes until the next launch of MediaCenter. Music section of NControl now properly generates thumbnails in Windows7. This build of NControl will reset your libraries so depending on how large your libraries are, your media libraries on the iPhone app might be blank anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes.
  
• 11/11/2009 - v34b Update to build 34. I accidentally limited channels to 30. This build fixes this.
  
• 3/22/2010 - v41 Fixed plugin registration version mismatch. DB Builds are now delayed 5 minutes after MediaCenter starts. You will not see any DB updates for 5 minutes after the plugin starts. If there are DB builds that are back to back, they will be separated by 2 minutes interval.
  
• 3/22/2010 - v42 Checking for file existence before getting file meta-data.
  
• 3/23/2010 - v43 Performing a db build after a complete sync from pressing the sync button.
  

I clicked on Accept in the network security dialog but Media Center does not show up in the NControl iPhone app OR The Media Center plugin worked for a few weeks then it all of a sudden no longer show up in the NControl iPhone app:

Manually configuring the NControl port in Windows Firewall on the host machine:

• Exit Media Center
• Click Start
• In Search Field enter "Windows Firewall"
• Click "Change settings"
• Click on Exceptions tab
• Click on Add port... button
  • Name = NControl Media Center Plugin (This can be anything)
  • Port number = 9200
  • Protocol = UDP
• Click on Change scope... button
• Select My network (subnet) only
• Click on OK to dismiss dialog
• Click on OK to dismiss dialog
• Click on OK to dismiss dialog
• Relaunch Media Center

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